The final rosters for the 2026 Olympic Games were due on New Year’s Eve. Team USA and Team Canada used every bit of runway before finalizing their 25-player squads on the final day of the year.
Boston Bruins 27-year-old center Morgan Geekie was an afterthought for the Canadian roster before the NHL season began. Now 40 games into the 2025-26 campaign, Geekie is leading the Bruins in both goals and points, and is tied for second-most goals in the league.
This led to months of deliberation on whether the forward with 25 goals would make the trip to Milan, Italy, to represent his country.
Canada elected not to take the Bruins forward.
Macklin Celebrini was the biggest surprise addition on the Wednesday morning announcement.
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Celebrini was the first overall selection in the 2024 NHL Draft and is the youngest player on the roster by a large margin at just 19 years old. He is five years younger than the next youngest member.
Celebrini has four fewer goals than Geekie, but a whopping 17 more assists.
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Geekie’s emergence as one of the league’s leading scorers is impressive because he is doing it in a unique way.
Unlike the NHL’s top scorer, MacKinnon, who has taken a league-high 173 shots this season, Geekie is one of only four players inside the league’s top-15 goal scorers with fewer than 100 shots taken.
The Bruins forward has scored on 25 of his 97 shots this season, giving him a shooting percentage above 25%.
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This is the highest shooting percentage of any player in the NHL with more than 50 shots.
Featured image via Bob DeChiara/Imagn Images
